Come Monday, after he has finished the Volta a Catalunya, Dan Martin (Quick-Step Floors) has his next objective in his sights already: `Put my feet up and sit on the sofa for a couple of weeks.` The reason for this short spell of rest and recuperation is two-fold: first, Martin hit the ground running this season and up to the Volta a Catalunya, the Irishman has been racing consistently hard. He has earned top 10 placings in nearly half of his 24 race days so far this year. And that`s without counting Martin`s third place overall in Paris-Nice, sixth on GC in the Volta ao Algarve and fifth in the Vuelta a Valencia. The second reason is that Martin`s next big objective, a strong ride in the Ardennes Classics, is fast looming on the horizon. So his short-term aim, as he tells Cyclingnews during the Volta a Catalunya, where he`s currently sitting sixth overall, is to be as fresh for that as possibleADVERTISEMENT `It was a hard few weeks with Paris-Nice and I`m feeling it a bit, I`ve raced a lot this year. But that was always the plan for the Classics, to do the `double` [Paris-Nice and Catalunya] because I did Tirreno then Catalunya when I won Liège-Bastogne-Liège [in 2013].` `The plan is to freshen up, put my feet up and sit on the sofa ... We`ll let these last couple of weeks soak in and then it`ll be good.` Of the three Ardennes Classics, he will race Amstel, won three times by team-mate Philippe Gilbert, `to get my legs going again and obviously we`ve got a super strong team for it. Amstel doesn`t really suit me as a race, but I can do a good job for the boys there, then see what I can do in Fleche and Liège, where I`ve done well.`
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